Getting There: Soul Train Theme

Soul Train: Theme (1973)

[purchase full version]

The death at his own hands of Soul Train founder and long-time presenter Don Cornelius today, February 1, has saddened me like few celebrity deaths ever have. Don Cornelius presided over my favourite sub-genre of popular music, the soul music of the early and mid-1970s. Soul Train – the show was his brainchild – brought all that great music by groups like The Delfonics and The Chi-Lites and The O’Jays and singers like Billy Preston and Billy Paul and Bill Withers to a wider audience. Thanks in great part to Soul Train, these acts crossed over into the pop charts, and across the Atlantic to Britain and to Europe.

Don Cornelius fostered a black consciousness that preached peace and came dressed in gaudy suits, but was utterly radical: Soul Train was a truly black thing on TV; that never existed before. The afro, promoted by the Sheen hair product range that sponsored Soul Train and worn by many of the trend-setting dancers, was as potent as a raised fist. Don Cornelius made a huge social impact. He was a giant.

It is fortuitous that this week’s theme riffs on means of transport. Most other themes would have proscribed the opportunity to pay tribute to one of my heroes.

So here is the famous Soul Train theme, the Gamble & Huff tune better known as “T.S.O.P.”, which was first used on the show in November 1973. It had been commissioned by Cornelius, and became a worldwide hit after debuting on Soul Train. Cornelius was precious about protecting the Soul Train trademark, and refused to let Gamble and Huff use it in the title, hence “T.S.O.P.”. Cornelius soon realised the folly of his decision.

But what have here is not the single version of “T.S.O.P.”, but the theme as it used in the intro to the show in 1973 (see here for more Soul Train themes and the fuller story of them).

Last year I put up a gallery of screenshots I had taken from the splendid TimeLife DVD collection of Soul Train. The picture that illustrates this post comes from it. The whole set is HERE.

“And as always in parting, we wish you love, peace and SOUL!"

Getting There: On Roller Skates

Roger Miller: You Can't Roller Skate in a Buffalo Herd

[purchase]

Melanie: Brand New Key

[purchase]

Roger McGuinn & Chris Hillman: Skate Date

[purchase]

I really wanted to contribute an entry about roller skating -- sure, partly because it fits in with this week's theme. But, mainly because I was looking for an excuse to use this wonderful picture of Edvard Petrini's pedaled roller skates.

Problem is, the first two songs that came to mind actually aren't about skating. The first was Roger Miller's "You Can't Roller Skate in a Buffalo Herd." The title may mention roller skating, but it's merely a non sequitur -- though the advice offered is sound.

Then, of course, there's Melanie's "Brand New Key." But, even when it was released in 1971, few listeners thought the song was really about the missing key to her quad skates. (“I don’t go too fast, but I go pretty far” indeed.) The song's lascivious reputation was cemented by its insertion into the Boogie Nights soundtrack, during a memorable audition scene.

Finally, I remembered a song about skating that really is...a song about skating: "Skate Date" by ex-Byrds Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman. It appeared on their 1980 album City, made just after Gene Clark bolted what had been McGuinn, Clark & Hillman. The harmonies, as always, are nice, but it's not among McGuinn's most profound songs. "Skate Date" would have benefited from a dash of "Brand New Key" double-entendre.

But, "Skate Date" is definitely about skating.

And now I feel fully justified using the picture.

Getting There: Eye of the Hurricane

David Wilcox: Eye of the Hurricane

[purchase]

Motorcycle songs often seem to come to a bad end, at least for the driver. We saw that last week in Vincent Black Lightning, and here it is again. The driver of the bike called the hurricane seeks the solitude and freedom a motorcycle can provide. The roar of the engine locks the world out, and the rider is free, if only for the duration of the ride. Perhaps this is why motorcycle riders in pop songs are usually rebels. David Wilcox is more interested in that sense of freedom, or of shelter, if you prefer, than he is in rebellion. Even so, when the end comes for his rider, there is still a sense of inevitability about it. But what a ride!

I must confess that I have never been on a motorcycle myself. My description of the feeling is what I understand from the songwriters I have heard on the subject. So, I will ask the motorcycle riders in our audience, how did I do? Did I get it? Comments, please.

Getting There: Nine Million Bicycles

Katie Melua: Nine Million Bicycles

[purchase]

Katie Melua's sweet 2005 single Nine Million Bicycles uses Beijing doubly, as a musical setting and as a cultural touchstone for population mass, in order to frame a sweet, gentle song of love in scale; indeed, a close read of the song reveals that its effect is driven, in part, by quite deliberate production parallels, in which the use of relatively authentic traditional Asian instrumentation and rhythmic flourishes fade in and out as the city is mentioned, only to dissipate into soft folk pop (which then, predictably, expands at the mention of outer space).

But the song is of cultural interest, too, for the way in which notable naysayer Simon Singh - a well-respected science writer for the Guardian - suggested that the Georgian-born, UK-based star was engaging in "pop sci politics", by noting at the beginning of her second verse that "we are 12 billion light years from the edge", a measurement which doesn't really match most agreed-upon measurements of the size of the universe. In response to this accusation that her song was a thinly-veiled attack on the accuracy of cosmologists, Melua appeared on a BCC program with Singh, and performed a version of the song which changed the lyrics to Singh's specs as follows:

We are 13.7 billion light-years from the edge of the observable universe, That's a good estimate with well-defined error bars, And with the available information, I predict that I will always be with you.

Unfortunately, I couldn't find a copy of the entire BBC recording, but here's an audio clip of the performance of Melua's new and totally hilarious verse replacement as compared with the original, embedded in a TED talk found over at YouTube:





And just for fun - because it's brand new, and because our rules allow for recent covers of songs as long as the original song being covered dates back far enough - I've included Arap Strap frontman Aidan John Moffat's tiny 2012 cover of the song, from his all-covers solo album Stolen Songs. Because I love the way it trades the bridge and final chorus away, leaving us with just 1:45 of weary, stripped-down glory. And because the song is quite different, in the end, without all the orchestral majesty and "ethnic flutes" credited on the original.

Aidan John Moffat: 9,000,000 Bicycles

[purchase]

Getting There: The Metro

Berlin: The Metro

[purchase]

Do you remember when every song featured a synthesizer? Then you're as old as I am! Bet you remember legwarmers and fringed t-shirts tied at the sides, too.

Berlin was an American synth-pop group that made it big in the 80s with their oft-banned hit Sex (I'm a…), which featured the vocals (and heavy breathing) of Terri Nunn. The Metro was the bigger MTV hit, though. The Metro of this New Wave song is the Paris mass-transit system.

I just got back from London, which also has a subway/tube/Metro system. My own home town is slooowly building a light-rail system, but otherwise we remain chained to the auto. So when I travel, I adore the speed and flexibility of these urban necessities. Beyond London's version (the oldest) and Paris' Metro, I've tasted the delights of mass-transit systems in Tokyo (where cell-phone conversations are banned, FYI, but everyone is madly texting away), Kyoto, Munich, Mexico City, Washington DC, Boston, Chicago, Toronto, San Francisco, and New York. You residents are so lucky to have these systems. Go ride one for me, 'k?

Getting There: America

Simon & Garfunkel: America (live bootleg, 1968)

[purchase studio version]

One of my big dreams is to one way travel coast-to-coast through the US, maybe in a camper van. At least in part, the seeds for that dream were planted many years ago by the Simon & Garfunkel’s “America”. Of course, the subjects of the song — Cathy and the singer — did not travel in a motor home, but by Greyhound bus (boarding in Pittsburgh, among the passengers is a “spy” in a gabardine suit whose bowtie is really a camera) and by thump, hitch-hiking from Saginaw. But by the time he starts counting cars on the New Jersey Turnpike, all the travelling seems to have become a bore. Which should put me in two minds about ideas of an itinerant journey across the USA.

This recording comes from the excellent Live At The Hollywood Bowl bootleg from 1968 (also known as Voices of Intelligent Dissent Bootleg, based on something Paul Simon says in response to an audience interjection after “Feelin’ Groovy”), which was engineered by Al Kooper. It seems likely that the concert at the Hollywood Bowl on 23 August 1968 was recorded for possible release (why else have Kooper engineer it?). In the end, it obviously wasn’t issued; indeed, no live album was released, except some tracks on the Greatest Hits collection, until the Concert In Central Park reunion gig more than a decade after Simon & Garfunkel had split.

This recording of “America” has an amusing introduction by Paul Simon about the recording of the Bookends LP, on which “America” originally appeared. But that sound at the beginning: is that Garfunkel burping?

Getting There: Mule Train

Tennessee Ernie Ford: Mule Train

[purchase]

Count Prince Miller: Mule Train

[purchase]

In 1949, America went "Mule Train" crazy. Now, more than 60 years later, it's not clear what drove that obsession. Maybe the song "Mule Train" was a metaphor, or perhaps it was just the beneficiary of old-west nostalgia or a clever PR campaign. It's not a particularly compelling piece -- it's largely a laundry list of dry goods being hauled by a mule-drawn convoy. There are some funny rhymes and wacky vocal gymnastics. But, that doesn't explain the "Mule Train" mania that gripped the nation.

Beginning in November 1949, a half dozen separate versions of "Mule Train" were recorded and charted in what was then called The Billboard. The magazine documented the craze in a series of articles. In the Nov. 5, 1949, issue, one such essay, titled "Scramble to Climb Aboard That Old Mule Train Turns Disk Biz Dizzy---But Good," proclaimed:

This is the week which will be marked down in the annals of the music industry as "Mule Train" week…

Furor started Monday when KLAC disk jockey Al Jarvis unveiled the Mercury Frankie Laine disking. Laine's platter brought out rival record men in force and within two hours Jarvis had been supplied with pressings of the RCA version by Vaughn Monroe (cut the previous night in Hollywood), and two Capitol interpretations, one with Gordon MacRae and second featuring hillbilly Tennessee Ernie…Disney Songs Inc., pubbers of the song, was flooded with calls from diskeries and others asking for dubs and lead sheets.

Wednesday Decca latched onto the tune with a fast recording by Bing Crosby….Decca also owns the Buzz Butler hillbilly version…MGM also evaded the pop market on the opus by slicing it as a country item with Arthur Smith…

In contrast to almost continuous play disks received when first launched, platter pilots went easy the latter part of the week. Several disk jockeys aired announcements saying "Mule Train" would "not be played today so that you don't tire of the song."

America tire of "Mule Train"? Don’t be crazy! The next issue of The Billboard continues panting:

"Train" started a disk jockey feud which centered around veteran platter pilot Al Jarvis. Several rival jockeys, burned because Jarvis was first to air the Laine, Crosby and Monroe versions of the tune and benefit the most publicity wise, attacked the disk pilot on their shows, one going so far as to say that he would play only the Buzz Butler-Decca version of the tune. Jarvis struck back…condemning colleagues who boycotted any version of the song for personal reasons…

[American Federation of Labor] delegates...assembled in San Jose to name Laine's version of "Train" as the union's official song…

Before the furor died down, America's platter pilots and labor leaders had still more versions to choose from, including takes by Woody Herman (with the Nat King Cole Trio vocalizing) and Spike Jones (the latter satirizing the song with a bit of now-offensive ethnic stereotyping called "Chinese Mule Train").

Here are two versions, the first my favorite version from that dizzying week in 1949, recorded by Tennessee Ernie Ford. The second is from the early 1970s, when "Mule Train" inexplicably enjoyed new life as a minor reggae hit by Count Prince Miller.

(A side note: For anyone who enjoys music history, the half-century worth of full-text, fully searchable issues of (The) Billboard available for free on Google Books, is an amazing resource, and a great way to waste an afternoon. Get along!)

Getting There: Every Woman I Know (Crazy ‘Bout An Automobile)

Ry Cooder: Every Woman I Know (Crazy ‘Bout An Automobile)

[purchase song]

Every Woman I Know (Crazy 'Bout An Automobile) is quintessential Ry Cooder. This version showcases his best guitar style - just the right number of notes - sparse but still full. The vocal backup is also classic Cooder: a superb 3-part harmony. It is also a great example of his chops on the slide guitar for which he is famed. Like many of the "roots" songs he has chosen to revive, the lyrics tell a story that could be considered slightly politically incorrect in our day and age.

Not only does the song tell a story of the classic age of the car in America (the '50s), it also references indirectly an alternate meaning of "Getting There" (the back seat). This is the age of the Drive-In movie theater: to get there, you had to have a car. Without a car, you couldn't even get a date (he sings: "seems like the women in this town don't pay no attention to you 'less you're drivin'")

William R. (Billy "The Kid") Emerson, who wrote the song in the mid 50s, played his version in more of a rhythm and blues style - almost a big band sound that included a horns section. Cooder's version almost veers to a reggae style but still manages to retain an air of the original. Cooder has played this song with a number of different musicians, including John Hiatt, Nick Lowe and Jim Keltner (in their short-lived group called Little Village) as well as with David Lindley.

posted by KKafa

Getting There: Starship

Paul Kantner & Jefferson Starship: Starship
[purchase]
This is not the Jefferson Starship of “Miracles” (which is still a great song, by a good band, in my opinion, despite its lack of critical respect) or the Starship of “We Built This City” (a bad song by a bad band, in my opinion, consistent with its critical loathing). This Jefferson Starship was what Paul Kantner, of the recently disintegrated Jefferson Airplane, decided to call the band that recorded a science fiction/popular revolution concept album called “Blows Against the Empire” originally released in 1970. The album included contributions from Kantner, Grace Slick, Jerry Garcia, Bill Kreutzmann, Mickey Hart, Graham Nash, David Crosby, Jack Casady, David Freiberg and others.
I came to this album, which became one of my favorites, in high school, probably 5 or 6 years after it was released, never having heard it before. I, like many others who listened to classic rock radio in the mid-70’s, became a fan of Jefferson Starship and bought “Red Octopus” because of “Miracles.” In what was probably the first time my obsession with music manifested itself, my friend Chris and I started working our way through the Starship and Airplane discography, mostly by buying albums from the Korvette’s cutout bins. There was no Allmusic or Wikipedia, so we learned about the albums by reading books and magazine articles, or by just buying what the store had and listening. Our exploration of the catalogue led us to listen to classics, like the Airplane’s “Surrealistic Pillow” and not-so-classics such as Slick’s “Manhole.” The first time I heard “Blows,” easily the best of the Kantner/Slick solo projects during this era, I fell in love with its goofy, but sincere, idealism and the loose, well played music. I read the liner notes booklet so many times that it fell apart.
The story of “Blows Against the Empire” tells of a revolutionary band that steals a government built spaceship with the intention of traveling through space and creating a utopian society. Its theme fits the era of its recording and release, during the anti-war movement, the Reagan governorship of California and the Nixon presidency, and shortly after the first moon landing. The music, written by the performers, and others, including Marty Balin and Rosalie Sorrells, includes rock, folk and noise, but the bulk of the album is beautiful jammy folk rock, with great vocal harmonies and guitar playing. “Starship”, the finale, features Kantner on acoustic guitar and vocal and Slick on vocal and keyboards, with Garcia on lead guitar, Crosby, Nash and Freiberg (of Quicksilver Messenger Service and later versions of Jefferson Starship) on vocals, and Harvey Brooks (of Electric Flag, and who worked with Dylan and Miles Davis, among others) on bass.
It took a while for the album to be released on CD, and I remember buying it and enjoying it for the first time in years. It is still a good listen, even if its themes of revolution and space travel seem a little dated now (although with Newt Gingrich’s pledge to build a moon base if elected president, maybe Kantner will rally his friends and try to hijack the moonship).

Getting There: The Kenworth of my Dreams

Richard Shindell: The Kenworth Of My Dreams

[purchase]

Nominally, this twangy countrified folk song is about a truck, and its new owner, who purchases and fixes up the titular Kenworth with the help of his brother-in-law, and settles into the life of a long-haul trucker despite the ridicule of his friends and family. But like all Richard Shindell songs, there's hints of the confessional around the edges of our narrative voice, and the upbeat bounce of the production is a ruse, designed to strain and pull at deliberate odds with the subtext. And these textual cues call his honesty into question, pushing us to dig deeper.

But this way lies despair. Why did the narrator sell his fishing boat, and his Camaro? Why does he turn the radio off, late at night, when those sad country songs hit the airwaves? What is he running from? We can ask, but we will not find the answers: Shindell has withheld them, so that we may live in the mind of the narrator, and experience his emotional state through sharing his avoidance. And so, in the end, like all great folk songs, this song is really about us: how pride can haunt us, how our dreams live and die through our actions and inactions, the lengths to which we are willing to change our lives in order to escape and pursue, the ways in which the engines of the past linger in our hearts and minds, no matter how hard or fast we run.

Getting There: The Thresher

Pete Seeger: The Thresher

[purchase]

Even though our theme is called Getting There, the USS Thresher never did. She was a nuclear submarine that sank off the coast of Massachusetts in 1963. It was the height of the Cold War, and the fear of anything nuclear was very real. I grew up with it, and we felt that any large war that broke out had the potential to be the last one mankind would ever see. I was three years old when the Thresher sank, so I can’t say I remember it. But I imagine that the first thing people worried about would have been the radiation. This context adds resonance to Pete Seeger’s song The Thresher. To Seeger, the sinking is a morality tale that demonstrates the folly of war in general, and nuclear weapons in particular. He makes his case quite eloquently.

I should note that, in the sinking of the Thresher, we got lucky. The ship’s nuclear rods were eventually recovered intact, and no leaked radiation was ever discovered.

Standards: Free Bird

Lynyrd Skynyrd: Free Bird

[purchase]

I have thousands upon thousands of cover songs in my collection, comprising hundreds upon hundreds of takes on scores and scores of songs generally considered standards, from all genres and source types - Tin Pan Alley, Childe Ballads, Appalachian songs, American Jazz, the Christian hymnal, overcovered country, bluegrass, motown, pop, folk and rock and roll classics, and more. I mean, isn't pretty much every Dylan and Beatles song a standard by now? Do I really want to post yet another favorite version of bluegrass classic Rain and Snow? Heck, I just spent the afternoon compiling 18 of my favorite covers of Townes Van Zandt's If I Needed You for an in-depth exploration of divergent coverage over at Cover Lay Down, and I'm not even convinced that THAT song should be considered a standard, given how often my concert-going guests fail to recognize it as a cover when they hear it alongside me.

Which is to say: the challenge of being the resident coverblogger when this sort of theme comes up is that I get completely overwhelmed: after years of deep pursuit and collection, I know too much to approach this topic any way but sideways. But I couldn't let this week go by without posting something. And so I spent the week thinking, and rejecting dozens of ways to take on our theme sincerely. And, in the end, I decided to come in at the eleventh hour to post a goddamn ORIGINAL - in part because, as it turned out, to both my initial surprise and, upon further thought, my sincere acceptance and relief, I had not a single cover of the song in my collection at all.

In fact, I even had to go out and track down the original track just to bring it to the table. And then I actually listened to it, all the way through.

And you know what? It turns out Free Bird is a really great song.

This song - which fittingly first found release as the final track of Lynyrd Skynyrd's debut album - is hardly ever covered in the studio, giving it but a dubious claim to the status of "classic song" or standard as typically defined here this week. But thanks to the long-running cultural meme of yelling out its name at concerts, despite the Wall Street Journal's assertion that most artists hate the song and never play it, I'd argue that this song is both a) the most heard song title of all time, and b) almost definitely the most covered song in live performance ever, even if many of those covers are but fragments played to tease and acknowledge the joke before moving on.

Oh, sure, Yesterday is famously the most covered song in the history of recorded music. I'm sure you all know a couple of verses of Blowing In The Wind, too, and hear it in a totally different voice than the one that echoes in my head. But if you're a regular concertgoer, I bet you've heard the first few bars of Free Bird played and sung in concert more than any Beatles or Dylan song, bar none. And I'll bet you can sing along, too - for the first four lines or so, anyway. I bet you know all the air guitar moves for it, too.

And if that doesn't make it a standard, I'll eat my 1-terabyte external hard drive.

Standards: Bridge Over Troubled Water

Merry Clayton: Bridge Over Troubled Water

[purchase]

Despite recording six studio albums of her own (the first four of which are very much worth owning), and working with both Neil Young and Lynyrd Skynyrd (which I find amusing considering their Southern Man/Sweet Home Alabama rivalry), Merry Clayton is still best known for providing the soaring vocals on The Rolling Stones' Gimme Shelter.

Perhaps less known is that in 1970 she released her very own version on her debut album, also entitled Gimme Shelter. The best track on it however, in my humble little opinion, is her rendition of Bridge Over Troubled Water, originally by you-know-who.

Standards: 1952 Vincent Black Lightning

Richard Thompson: 1952 Vincent Black Lightning

[purchase a different live version]

In June, 2000, my family went to London. As it turned out, Richard Thompson was playing in Croydon, not too far away, and we got tickets. My wife and I were big fans, and my kids, who were 10 and nearly 7, also loved his music. WFUV, currently my favorite radio station, plays him often, and he regularly appeared at the Tarrytown Music Hall, just down the road from our house, and his shows were a family outing. If you are a fan, you know this song, probably the one song that Thompson has to play every night to avoid rioting. It is a modern ballad, in the style of an old English ballad, about the love of a boy (James) for a girl (Red Molly) and a motorcycle (the Vincent). To me, it is also a perfect short story. In only a few minutes and verses, Thompson immerses you in the setting, fills out the characters and tells his story. I’m an American professional who has never ridden a motorcycle, yet Thompson’s artistry makes me feel what it is like to be an English criminal and understand why he loves both the woman and the bike. And when he plays the song live, his guitar playing is always mind blowing.

The concert at Croydon was an excellent show. It is remembered particularly in my family for three reasons. First, the opening act, a singer/songwriter, was awful. I won’t name her here, but if you want to know, I’m sure you can find it on the Internet somewhere. Second, early in the set, Thompson broke a string, and was able to change it himself while playing and singing “Twist and Shout.” Finally, there was this version of “1952 Vincent Black Lightning,” with two added verses, which are rarely performed. In his pre-song banter, Thompson says that they are “more for the enthusiast.” (Unfortunately, the banter is attached to the end of the prior track, so I am not including it here).

One of the extra verses, which becomes the second verse, describes the history of the Vincent Black Lightning, and how it broke the land speed record, This is why, James explains, he had to have one of his own. In the standard version, after James is shot during a robbery and is dying, he hands the keys to the Vincent to Molly, gives her one last kiss, and dies. The narrator concludes, “He gave her his Vincent to ride.” But the additional verse goes on to describe how Molly stole James’ body from the hospital, had him cremated, his ashes contained in the Vincent’s fuel tank and buried at the side of the road. In this version, the narrator concludes, “And even the hard men cried, And forever on his Vincent he rides.”

Is the song better with the two verses? Presumably, Thompson, the writer, doesn’t think so, or he would have recorded the song with them, or at least perform the song live with them on a regular basis, and he doesn’t. I have to agree. But I’m glad I was able to hear them.

Standards: Summertime

Brainbox: Summertime

[purchase]

Perhaps you were expecting Ms. Joplin? Don't be so disappointed. This version of the "Porgy And Bess" classic is performed by a Dutch prog rock group led by pre-Focus guitar god Jan Akkerman and a histrionic vocalist named Kaz Lux. The year is 1969. "Subtlety" did not sell records. And let's face it, when Kaz hits that falsetto "SkkkkyyyYY!" 80 seconds in, you're hooked.

Standards: Wayfaring Stranger(s)

Maria McKee: Wayfarin' Stranger

[purchase]

Jerry Reed: Wayfaring Stranger

[purchase]

"Wayfaring Stranger" is a standard in the folk music catalog, dating back to the 19th century. A religious ballad, it gained new meaning during the 1930s, with lyrics seemingly reflecting the plight of the displaced and homeless -- poor wayfaring strangers, "traveling through this world of woe." In the 1940s, it became a signature tune for Burl Ives, who named both his autobiography and radio program after it.

"Wayfaring Stranger" remains an oft-recorded song -- an iTunes search brings up more than 400 matches. Here are two distinctly interpretations.

The first is strictly traditional, performed by Maria McKee on the Songcatcher soundtrack album. It is one of McKee's finest vocal performances, in a recording career full of them.

The second is by Jerry Reed. Thanks to his novelty records and good-ol'-boy persona honed in movies like Smokey and the Bandit and The Waterboy, Reed's many fine records of the 1960s and early '70s have sadly been forgotten. Among the most interesting is 1967's Jerry Reed Explores Guitar Country, on which he reworks a dozen folk and pop classics. Reed's "Wayfaring Stranger" starts with his signature acoustic guitar picking. Soon, a Hammond organ joins in, and Reed's playing gets jazzy, and he even offers up some scat singing. His unique take is a reminder that standards can not only be honored, but reinterpreted as well.

Standards: Minnie the Moocher

Big Bad Voodoo Daddy: Minnie the Moocher

[purchase]

Minnie the Moocher is the timeless tale of a good girl gone bad, prohibition style. The song was written by Cab Calloway, who first recorded it in 1932. Calloway was a great showman. His dance moves look impossible even now, and may have inspired James Brown. Minnie the Moocher has the famous hi-de-hi-de-hi call and response between Calloway and his band. He used to get his audiences to sing the responses, and then Calloway would sing more and more complicated strings of nonsense syllables, until the audience could follow him no longer. All in good fun, of course. Big Bad Voodoo Daddy was part of the swing revival movement that broke out in the mid 1990s. Unlike many of their peers, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy performed mostly original songs. Obviously, Minnie the Moocher was an exception, but, heard along side their originals, it served to validate just how good at writing these kinds of songs the band was.

As a bonus, I thought I would share something fun that I came across while researching this post: the Betty Boop cartoon Minnie the Moocher. The song comes in about half way through the cartoon, and the version you hear is by Cab Calloway and his band. The dance moves of the walrus-like ghost were taken from a rotoscope of Calloway’s stage moves.

Standards: My One and Only Love

John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman: My One and Only Love

[purchase

So, what is a ‘standard’ anyway? The temptation is to see the term as defining that special type of popular song that has, through no real fault of its own, managed to move beyond mere ubiquity into the realms of cliché. Ask a cross-section of people to name a standard and the songs mentioned would be telling – My Way, perhaps, or Unforgettable. My Baby Just Cares For Me. That type of thing.

The only trouble there, of course, is that these songs aren’t standards. We equate them with a particular artist, but would be hard pressed to name a version of the song recorded by anyone other than that person. To an extent, they become cabaret fodder, or the purview of lazy impressionists in need of some kind of shorthand with which to telegraph to an equally lazy audience who it is they are trying to pastiche.

My One and Only Love, on the other hand, is a true standard having been recorded by a huge number of artists despite never exactly achieving the type of fame that can so effectively rob a song of all its power. This version comes from John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman’s self-titled 1963 masterpiece, and words can’t do it justice. Suffice it to say that if you are unfamiliar with Hartman this recording will make you wonder how it’s possible that a singer of such warmth and emotional range could possibly be so comparatively little-known. As for Trane – well, the avant-garde’s gain was certainly lyrical jazz’s loss: this was the only vocal album he would ever record as band leader, and that seems a damn shame.

Guest post by Houman

Standards: Lovesong

Jack Off Jill: Lovesong

[purchase]

Since its 1989 release via Disintigration, The Cure’s “Lovesong” (often titled “Love Song,” to the general apathy of its copyright owner) has been the object of dozens of published covers and countless live renditions by a mélange of artists representing all manner of genre. Its straightforward lyrics and their accessible expression of emotion guaranteed the song plenty of publicity and airtime, and its hooky, downbeat guitar and bass riffs laid over an anxious drumbeat and haunting, typically Goth-rock synthesizer chorus all proved not only catchy and memorable, but also easily replicable to even the amateur musician.

Though certainly not alone in exploiting the aggressive potential latent in “Lovesong,” now-defunct Floridian band Jack Off Jill bring the song’s energy to the forefront of the presentation. Vocalist Jessicka implies a world of meaning that Robert Smith, whether intentionally or not, left missing from his tremulous, downtrodden vocalisations. Beginning the song in breathy seriousness, she sets a tone of intimate address that increases in intensity as the timbre of her voice clears and rises throughout the verses. In true ejaculatory fashion, Jessicka’s grungy vocals erupt into a scream that highlights for the listener the energy and passion that Smith’s version ignored in its representation of devoted love.

Jack Off Jill’s version of “Lovesong” appears as track 66 (tracks 15-65 are each comprised of six seconds of silence, a digital trick used by artists who wish to argue that something something tracks aren’t songs something something, as on Korn’s 1998 release Follow the Leader) on Clear Hearts Grey Flowers, the 2000 album immediately preceding their breakup. Many other artists have performed noteworthy versions of this standard—particularly memorable is the smoky, punky, overdriven anthem delivered by The Deluxetone Rockets on 2008’s Green Room Bluesbut Jack Off Jill’s carefully delivered sounds create what is, to me, the most moving adaptation.

Guest post by Andrew

Standards: Fools Rush In

Bow Wow Wow: Fools Rush In

[purchase]

14 year old Burmese Londoner Annabella Lwin had been working in a dry cleaners when punk impressario Malcom McLaren recruited her and  three members of Adam and The Ants to form the Burundi drummers-inspired  Bow Wow Wow. Two years before their cover of the Strangeloves' "I Want Candy" hit the UK Top Ten , they released a poppy cover of this forty year old Johnny Mercer/ Rube Bloom standard, originally sung by the likes of Frank Sinatra, Ray Eberle and Billy Eckstine.

While Annabella sings like a breathless, flirty 14 year old,  the real triumph belongs to bassist Leigh Gorman, who frantically riffs through the entire two minutes. "Fools Rush In" appears on the second disc of the 2006 Marie Antoinette soundtrack.

Standards: Knockin' on Heaven's Door

Warren Zevon: Knockin' on Heaven's Door

[purchase]

There are dozens of songs penned by Bob Dylan that can be considered standards, but to me no other Dylan song has the "universal appeal" or an all-encompassing feeling quite like "Knockin' on Heaven's Door." The song is originally from the 1973 soundtrack to Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid and describes that thoughts and feeling of a dying deputy. From what I can tell, it's been covered by over 400 different artists ranging from hard rockers Guns N' Roses to Canadian pop princess Avril Lavigne, to reggae, country, soul, hip-hop, and R&B interpretations.

"Knockin' on Heaven's Door" is ultimately about facing one's own mortality. Warren Zevon was acutely aware that his life was ending when he recorded his 2003 swan song The Wind. In August of 2002 Zevon was diagnosed with inoperable peritoneal mesothelioma, a cancer of the abdominal wall and lungs, and was given months to live. Despite the concerns of his friends and collaborators, Zevon included "Kockin' on Heaven's Door" on The Wind, in addition to original songs that reference the triumphs and failures of his 56 years. His version is very close to Dylan's original recording, with a tired but heartfelt voice scratching out the lyrics while a solitary electric guitar, played by Brad Davis, grinds out a counter melody. Throughout the repeating chorus at the end of the song you can hear Zevon sing "Open up, open up for me," as if Zevon is saying "it's your last chance to tell me what you need to tell me." The Wind was released on August 26, and Zevon passed away on September 7, 2003.

Standards: Blue Skies

Special Consensus: Blue Skies

[purchase]

If it’s a cloudy, gray day and you’re feeling down, then find a happy, upbeat version of “Blue Skies” to get yourself smiling again. At least that’s what we do out here in rainy Oregon. After being written in 1926 by Irving Berlin for the Rodgers and Hart musical, Betsy, the song became an immediate hit. One unique rendition is a bluegrass instrumental arrangement by the award-winning Special Consensus band. Besides traditional and contemporary offerings, they’re a band that specifically looks for songs from other genres to ‘grass up. They might find something with Celtic flavorings, or they might take a liking to an old classic country number. In this case, Special Consensus took the popular classic jazz standard and turned it into a signature tune for their band.

Together since 1975, Special Consensus knows what works and doesn't. Their main ingredient is driving banjo-centric material that allows Greg Cahill to demonstrate his flexibility, creativity and eclecticism with the others band members’ solid instrumental prowess. From Chicago, Cahill is highly respected by his bluegrass peers as a consensus builder, and he has served as the International Bluegrass Music Association’s President and Board Chairman.

On their 2007 album release with this track, the band was rounded out with Ron Spears (mandolin), Justin Carbone (guitar) and David Thomas (bass). “The Trail of Aching Hearts” album also featured some key guests to embellish their sound -- Tim Crouch (fiddle), Rob Ickes and Phil Leadbetter (Dobro), Tres Nugent and Tim Dishman (bass). It’s Dishman who actually got the nod for the grooving bass break in “Blue Skies.”

Special Consensus is a bluegrass band with a long track record of success. Their aptitude and diversity displayed with a jazz classic like “Blue Skies” will give you a small taste as to why they garner so much notoriety and fame.

Guest Post by Joe Ross

Standards: A Whiter Shade Of Pale

King Curtis: A Whiter Shade Of Pale

[purchase]

I remember the wonder I experienced when I first heard “A White Shade Of Pale” as an 11-year-old, a decade after it was first released. It’s a wonder I retain to this day. Never mind the wilfully impenetrable lyrics employing nautical metaphor to describe a seduction, it is the melody that arouses in me (as it were) a peculiar feeling, one of yearning and unease and, oddly, comfort. Like other Procol Harum favourites, such as “Homburg” or “Salty Dog”, it’s gothic and just a bit creepy.

King Curtis instrumental version of the song, recorded in early March 1971 at San Francisco’s Fillmore West with his group The Kingpins (Aretha Franklin’s backing band), retains that strange beauty, but displaces Procol Harum’s gothic sensibility with a soulful vibe. It later featured in the opening credits of the British cult movie Withnail And I (set in 1969, two years before Curtis’ recording).

Live At Fillmore West was released in August 1971. A week later, King Curtis was stabbed to death in New York by junkies whom he had asked to move from his property. He was 37.

Curtis died just as jazz fusion was making headway. One wonders how things might have panned out for him. He might have set an agenda quite different to that of fellow saxophonist Grover Washington Jr (never mind the even smoother David Sanborn). He surely would have been aghast at the later popularity of the elevator sax stylings of Kenny G, who has almost single-handedly robbed the great instrument of its street-cred.

Standards: We'll Meet Again

Johnny Cash: We'll Meet Again

[purchase]

"We'll Meet Again" is a song hope in times of trouble. A mega-hit in England at the dawn of World War II, the song was popularized by Vera Lynn, who is still alive and kicking at age 94. (In 2009, Dame Vera Lynn's "Best of" CD reached #1 on the British charts, making her the oldest person to achieve that distinction.) The song captured the national mood, helping Britons keep stiff upper lips as their soldiers headed off to battle and uncertain fates.

A quarter century later, "We'll Meet Again" was played for laughs in Dr. Strangelove, a tone that was echoed in what to many sounded like a tongue-in-cheek cover by the Byrds. But, to me, the most memorable version is the one on Johnny Cash's American IV - The Man Comes Around. Released in late 2002, American IV is the final album of new material issued during Cash's lifetime, and "We'll Meet Again" is the final track.

It's a fitting sign off; Cash was in ill health and repeated in interviews that his time was short and that he was looking forward to the afterlife. As a Johnny Cash fan from childhood, the song sent chills down my spine when I first heard it (even more so than "Hurt," whose companion video also foretold of Cash's demise). On "We'll Meet Again," Cash's voice is wobbly, but the instrumentation is surprisingly breezy. The opening guitar run by Thom Bresh (son of Cash's longtime friend Merle Travis) borrows from "Happy Trails to You." An uncharacteristic (for Cash) clarinet and Hawaiian-style dobro create the image of the singer sailing off into the sunset. Family and friends seem to be waving goodbye as they join in on the closing chorus. June Carter Cash can be heard in the crowd -- she would die less than six months after the record's release, with her husband joining her just a few months later.

Standards: Good Lovin'

Monkeys Typing: Good Lovin'

[Not available for purchase, but see below for more downloads]

1965 was the year I began listening to pop music. It's also the year Good Lovin' was written and released, though I can't claim to having heard either the Limmie Snell or The Olympics versions. I was, however, very much tuning in to AM radio when the more popularly known Young Rascals version hit the charts in 1966. The song is ranked number 325 in Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, and as such, has been a standard for more than one musican and group.

The one band that I associate most strongly with the song as one of their "standards" is the Grateful Dead. It appears on their 1978 Shaedown Street album and I recall more than one Dead concert where I heard them play it.

The version here is a live cover by a Binghamton, NY "jam band" band called Monkeys Typing. My ears tell me the Grateful Dead rather than the Young Rascals must be the driving influence behind this version. In fact, Typing Monkeys list the Greatful Dead as one of their influences. Aside from the relative polish of their live performances, one thing that impresses me about Monkeys Typing is the fact that they - and the Grateful Dead - offer up a large collection of legally free music for you to download and listen to at www.archive.org, and that is where this version comes from.

posted by KKafa

Standards: Up a Lazy River

Rickie Lee Jones: Up a Lazy River

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I enjoy complex storytelling in songs as much as anyone, but songs that become standards often feature simple lyrics that give them a universal appeal. The songwriter captures a moment in time perfectly, and sets the mood in a way that is relevant to generations in both the present and the future. Up a Lazy River is a Hoagy Carmichael tune from 1930, but it still speaks to us today. Carmichael gives us a blissful summer day, and a couple drifting slowly down a stream, free of care, if only for a moment.

Rickie Lee Jones included the song in an entire album of standards, 2000’s It’s Like This. Her definition of a standard includes the Gershwins, the Beatles, and even Steely Dan. Jones finds the perfect setting for Up a Lazy River. She opens the song in a state of languid bliss, but halfway through, the current hastens and she is joined by a male chorus. This is a device that goes back at least to the swing era, and possibly also a nod to the hit version of the song by the Mills Brothers. The male chorus here is Dan Hicks, Ben Folds, and Taj Mahal. Jones sums up the proceedings perfectly at the end. “That was mighty good,” she says. Indeed.